It is an axiom of marketing that: "if goods are to be sold, those goods must be brought to the public's attention." Advertising has been the traditional approach. Recently, behavioral studies have shown that a large number of purchases are motivated by what has been termed "impulse buying". While this term has some rather negative connotations, it adequately describes one method of marketing goods. In particular, it has been found that an essential requirement for selling goods by impulse buying is an attractive display of the product offered for sale.
Apart from the concept of impulse buying, it is universely agreed that packaging and the manner in which goods are displayed often spells the success or failure of a product. In other words, the buying public is significantly influenced by the manner in which goods are offered for sale.
Finally, it has been found that the buying public is forever attracted by novelty and newness. It is common experience to witness many products being sold under the labels "new", "improved" or "new and improved", etc.
In each of these cases, providing an attractive display for a product improves sales and the acceptance of new products. Balanced against the desirability of providing an attractive display is the fundamental objective of keeping marketing costs as low as possible. Heretofore, cardboard or corrugated cardboard displays have frequently been used to draw the attention of the public to a new product or a special offer or sale. While these displays have met with some success, they universally are of such design and construction that they cannot withstand the rigors of long term service. In addition, they are not often designed for being taken apart and put away in storage for use at a later date. Consequently, over the long term, these display stands, while inexpensive from a first cost point of view, are uneconomical if repeated use is to be made of them. An attractive, economical, knock-down display stand would be a significant addition to the field of package and display engineering.
One important advantage of injection molded plastics is that production rates are high and unit costs are low. In addition, quite intricate parts can be produced since dimensional accuracy is high. Foam plastics are noted for their strength and light weight. Since dimensional accuracy is high, interlocking of thin walled components becomes especially feasible. These three features (low cost, dimensional accuracy and high strength per unit weight) could work hand in hand to solve the problem of producing a low cost, knock-down, attractive display stand.